1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and an image forming method using the apparatus which is provided with a transfer roller transferring an image formed on an image carrier to a recording medium.
2. Related Art
There is disclosed an image forming apparatus which develops an electrostatic latent image to be visible using a liquid developer with high viscosity in which a toner containing solid content is dispersed in a carrier liquid (for example, refer to JP-A-2009-14808, FIG. 1). In the image forming apparatus, four image forming stations are provided which form images with different colors from each other, and toner images formed by the respect image forming stations are overlapped on an intermediate transfer belt so as to form a color image. The intermediate transfer belt is suspended on a pair of driving roller and a driven roller which are disposed separately from each other, and drives a driving roller by using a belt driving motor so as to move in a predetermined direction while the color image is carried. In addition, a secondary transfer apparatus which is often used as a dry image forming apparatus is provided to face the driving roller, the color image is secondarily transferred onto a recording medium such as paper, film and cloth. In other words, in the secondary transfer position, a secondary transfer roller of which an external peripheral surface is covered by an elastic member such as rubber is disposed to face the driving roller with the intermediate transfer belt interposed therebetween, so that a nip is formed between the intermediate transfer belt and the elastic member. Then, by driving the driving roller by a belt driving motor, the intermediate transfer belt is rotated and the secondary transfer roller is rotatably driven with respect to the intermediate transfer belt, and the recording medium is nipped and transported through the nip. During nipping and transporting the recording medium, a color image on the intermediate transfer belt is secondarily transferred onto the recording medium.
In such an image forming apparatus, a position accuracy of an image with respect to the recording medium is required in order to increase the image quality, so that various studies have been carried out on each part of the apparatus. However, for example, as the apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2009-14808 (in FIG. 1), when the secondary transfer roller is rotatably driven so as to perform the secondary transfer on the intermediate transfer belt, a position of the image with respect to the recording medium cannot be adjusted in the secondary transfer position.